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Electric Shock Showdown! (014)

gentwoer

Well-Known Member
Ash finally gets his first real badge that he actually earned without it being given for gratitude and not actually winning a Pokemon battle. Too bad this didn't set a trend of Ash getting the rest of his badges through actual victory.

I think this episode did a great job of adapting the games actually. In the games Surge used Voltorb, Pikachu, and Raichu but the anime distills it to just Raichu to focus on the Pikachu vs its evolved form conflict. Also in the games Raichu can't learn any new electric attacks that it didn't learn as Pikachu but stating that it can only learn all the electric attacks when it evolves makes it seem that much more powerful. Also of note is that Raichu uses six attacks (Thundershock, Thunderbolt, Mega Punch, Mega Kick, Body Slam, Take Down) instead of the normal four making it seem more versatile.

It was pretty neat for Ash to win with an actual strategy even if it was Brock's idea. But, I guess that's not different than a kid using a strategy guide when playing the games.
 

KyogreThunder

Call of Fate
Good episode. I felt sorry for Pikachu when Raichu beat him up in the first battle. I still think Lt. Surge should have used more Pokemon than just an overpowered one. Ash finally earned his Gym Badge in an actual battle.
8/10
 

Leonhart

Imagineer
Good episode. I felt sorry for Pikachu when Raichu beat him up in the first battle. I still think Lt. Surge should have used more Pokemon than just an overpowered one. Ash finally earned his Gym Badge in an actual battle.
8/10

I think he only used one Pokemon during the Gym match due to this episode's plot focusing so much on Pikachu's rivalry with his evolved form.
 

Leonhart

Imagineer
What I loved the most (apart from how amazing TR was in this episode <3) is how nice Lt. Surge ended up being once he was defeated. He seemed very mean and arrogant but the moment he lost he praised Ash, showing it's just part of his 'gym leader attitude'.

Matis having a change of heart was somewhat frustrating from my vantage point however, because the trigger for that was simply him losing. I just found the change to be contrived.
 

Leonhart

Imagineer
BulleDeChagrin said:
It didn't come across as just a change of heart to me. It felt like he just acts tough towards everyone, but then he shows respect to who he deems good trainers.

That's a good way of looking at it, too. He was similar to Erika, who also seemed to lack respect for Satoshi until she deemed him a good person when he saved her Kusaihana.
 
As far as Kanto Gym matches go, this episode had one of the better ones since it was almost as good as Ash's match with Blaine. The first battle was hard to watch since Pikachu struggled a lot but the rematch was so good since Ash was able to figure out Raichu's weakness thanks to Brock's observations. Brock really deserves the credit for giving Ash a way to battle Raichu that would give him an edge.
 
LT Surge was such a huge dude and his ego was almost as big as Gary's. What I admired about Ash here was that he accepted his loss since he deserved it and seemed ready to make an effort to improve his odds of winning during the re-match. I liked that Brock helped him come up with a counter strategy against LT Surge's Raichu and my favorite scene was when Team Rocket cheered for Pikachu when they were hiding in the bushes. 8/10
 

Leonhart

Imagineer
Firefo×Fennekin said:
I liked that Brock helped him come up with a counter strategy against LT Surge's Raichu

I enjoyed Takeshi's insight in telling Satoshi to train and increase Pikachu's speed so that it could outmaneuver Raichu, but I wish that we had at least seen Satoshi and Pikachu train on-screen even as just a quick training montage scene, instead of that happening completely off-screen.
 

Leonhart

Imagineer
Bortgreen said:
Brocking talking about missing moves by evolving too fast with a stone is very clever considering how the anime is well know to avoid this kind of game mechanics being mentioned

It reminded me of how levels were mentioned a few episodes prior to this one, and it seems like the writers mentioned a lot of in-game mechanics early in the OS saga, but then slowly stopped doing that as the saga progressed.
 

RetroPokeFan

Well-Known Member
This one is honestly one of my favourites of the original Kanto series.

It's a pretty big one for Pikachu because not only is this Ash's first proper gym battle where he isn't being given a gym badge either out of pity or because he did this one good thing which is more than enough for the gym leader to hand the badge over, he went up against Lt. Surge's (played by the late great Maddie Blaustein in the dub) fierce Raichu with it's feisty cocky attitude. It gives us the reason why Pikachu doesn't want to evolve as it wants to prove it can be the best without needing to evolve (and welp, it's certainly proved it in the PWC), it's still quite a powerful episode to this day.

You know it still holds up when even D&P rehashed the same plot and Ash's first PWC/WCS match not only featured Pikachu going up against another Raichu (Visquez's) but also even mentions that very battle.
 
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